Island Wassail History

We want to expand this section! 

If you know anything about Isle of Wight Wassail traditions please get in touch wightwassail@gmail.com. 

Isle of Wight Wassail songs

There appear to be different versions of an Isle of Wight Wassail song

•  The Isle of Wight Wassail song performed by Dave Brian.

• The Isle of Wight Wassail song from the Isle of Wight Folk Archive. The lyrics are available here and copied below. Another beautiful version of the same for harp is performed by Fran Barsby in this video.

Apple Tree Wassail

Old apple tree we’ll wassail thee 

And hoping thou wilt bear.

The Lord does know where we shall be 

To be merry another year.

Chorus:

To blow well and to bear well and so merry let us be

Let every man drink up his cup and health to the old apple tree.

Here’s to thee, old apple tree 

Mayest thou well bud

Give us a crop of good apples ripe

Red well-rounded, the good juicy type. Ch.

Here is our cider now drink of it well

And give us good apples that

we can tell Let every man take off his hat

And shout to the old apple tree. Ch.

Stand fast root, bear well top 

Give us a youling sop

Every twig, apples big

Every bough, apple enough. Ch,

Shout Outs:

Hats full, caps full, half a bushel bag full

God bless every poor man who’s got an apple tree.

Hats full, caps full, half a bushel bag full

Barn’s floor fulls and a little heap under the stairs!

Hats full, caps full, half a bushel bag full 

What you please to give us

happy we shall be

Hip, hip, hooroo! x3

Huzza, Huzza,……

More Wight Wassail History

Folk on Wight links to a summary entitled "The Way We Were. Old Traditions, Sayings, Songs, Sports &  Pastimes on the Isle of Wight." with a section on wassailing (both the door to door and apple tree or orchard wassails). It appears to have been taken from something called "Wight Christmas Traditions" and a search turns up this page but a source for that is not clear. The section on Wassailing is copied below:

Wassailing: From Wight Christmas Traditions: 

The tradition of wassailing, from the Anglo-Saxon toast Wæshael, meaning "good health", is linked to the harvest of apples and was celebrated on the Island on New Year's Day and Twelfth Night. On New Year's Day in the town it involved the communal wassail bowl, a wooden ash bowl filled with roasted apples, hot, spiced ale, cream and sugar, and the wassailers would tour the town allowing their neighbours a drink from the bowl from a wassail cup decorated with ribbons and displaying a large apple. 

There they would sing the "letting in" song: 

Wassail, wassail, to your town, the cup is white and the ale is brown. The cup is made of the ashen tree and the ale is brewed of good barley. Little maid, little maid, turn the pin, open the door and let us in. God be here and God be there, we wish you all a Happy New Year. 

Wassailing also took place on Twelfth Night, where on the farms and orchards themselves a different celebration took place. The head farmer would take the farm workers into the orchard, seize a branch of the most prominent tree, and recite the Wassail Song: 

Old apple tree, we wassail thee, and hope that thou wilt bear. For the Lord doth know where we shall be, 'til apples come again next year. To blow well and bear well So merry let us be Let every man take off his hat, and shout to the old apple tree; Old apple tree we wassail thee I hopes that thou wilt bear Hat-fulls, cup-fulls, three bushel bag fulls and a little heap under the stairs. 

The orchard would be toasted with warm cider, with the remaining cider fed to the roots of the trees. In the 1920s in Yarmouth, when the Apple Tree was wassailed, a pistol was fired through the branches of the tree to the shout of Hip-Hip Horray!, but apparently not before then, and not everywhere on the Island. This tradition carried on in the first half of the 20th Century, but then, sadly, died out.